High-Fidelity Control of Superconducting Qubits Using Direct Microwave Synthesis in Higher Nyquist Zones

  1. William D. Kalfus,
  2. Diana F. Lee,
  3. Guilhem J. Ribeill,
  4. Spencer D. Fallek,
  5. Andrew Wagner,
  6. Brian Donovan,
  7. Diego Ristè,
  8. and Thomas A. Ohki
Control electronics for superconducting quantum processors have strict requirements for accurate command of the sensitive quantum states of their qubits. Hinging on the purity of ultra-phase-stable
oscillators to upconvert very-low-noise baseband pulses, conventional control systems can become prohibitively complex and expensive when scaling to larger quantum devices, especially as high sampling rates become desirable for fine-grained pulse shaping. Few-GHz radio-frequency digital-to-analog converters (RF DACs) present a more economical avenue for high-fidelity control while simultaneously providing greater command over the spectrum of the synthesized signal. Modern RF DACs with extra-wide bandwidths are able to directly synthesize tones above their sampling rates, thereby keeping the system clock rate at a level compatible with modern digital logic systems while still being able to generate high-frequency pulses with arbitrary profiles. We have incorporated custom superconducting qubit control logic into off-the-shelf hardware capable of low-noise pulse synthesis up to 7.5 GHz using an RF DAC clocked at 5 GHz. Our approach enables highly linear and stable microwave synthesis over a wide bandwidth, giving rise to resource-efficient control and the potential for reducing the required number of cables entering the cryogenic environment. We characterize the performance of the hardware using a five-transmon superconducting device and demonstrate consistently reduced two-qubit gate error (as low as 1.8%) accompanied by superior control chain linearity compared to traditional configurations. The exceptional flexibility and stability further establish a foundation for scalable quantum control beyond intermediate-scale devices.

Hardware for Dynamic Quantum Computing

  1. Colm A. Ryan,
  2. Blake R. Johnson,
  3. Diego Ristè,
  4. Brian Donovan,
  5. and Thomas A. Ohki
We describe the hardware, gateware, and software developed at Raytheon BBN Technologies for dynamic quantum information processing experiments on superconducting qubits. In dynamic
experiments, real-time qubit state information is fedback or fedforward within a fraction of the qubits‘ coherence time to dynamically change the implemented sequence. The hardware presented here covers both control and readout of superconducting qubits. For readout we created a custom signal processing gateware and software stack on commercial hardware to convert pulses in a heterodyne receiver into qubit state assignments with minimal latency, alongside data taking capability. For control, we developed custom hardware with gateware and software for pulse sequencing and steering information distribution that is capable of arbitrary control flow on a fraction superconducting qubit coherence times. Both readout and control platforms make extensive use of FPGAs to enable tailored qubit control systems in a reconfigurable fabric suitable for iterative development.